Saturday, April 1, 2017

Layoffs Hit NY1

Change landed hard on NY1 and its viewers this week, in the form of layoffs for about a dozen employees, part of a shift in direction that employees said has been underway since Charter took over in May 2016.

According to the NY Times, many of the victims were recognizable and beloved on-air figures: Shelley Goldberg, the station’s parenting correspondent; Neil Rosen, the entertainment critic with the Big Apple-based rating system; and a travel correspondent, Valarie D’Elia, among others. The cuts — which also included some of the news channel’s programming — did not appear to involve anyone from the station’s hard news operation.

“It’s almost like a second New York family: the people I relied on to get through the day,” said Darice Moyre, shaking her head, in a coffee shop in Astoria, Queens. She said she was familiar with many of the people who had been let go.

“To me it just looked as if they wanted to put their efforts elsewhere,” said Ms. D’Elia, who said she was not surprised by the changes. Still, she said, it remains to be seen what will happen when “a lot of these people who people loved aren’t on the air.”

Whereas the quirky station, with programs like “The Call,” where any New Yorker could call with a gripe, had operated with the understanding that its value was derived not from ratings or advertising dollars, but from the benefit it offered in keeping local cable subscribers, the station’s new managers came in with different ideas, employees said. “The Call” is soon to be canceled.

At an all-hands meeting after the merger in December, employees were told that Charter’s news channels were going to have to start making money, employees said.

“They said that these news products lose money and our mission is to stop that from happening,” said one, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the company.

1 comment:

Charter Communications only cares about its shareholders. It has given New Yorkers the ultimate middle finger. The way they handled this was even in a careless way. They cut the last episode of "The Call" to an half hour, and didn't even allow for potential callers to call in. Charter Communications also raised my cable bill by $17.00 when they first took over. All they know how to do is pat themselves on the back through their advertisements. I have had cable since it was Manhattan Cable, and while I am no fan of Time Warner Cable, at least Time Warner showed some concern for the average New Yorker.